8. Meet up with some old friends.

A few weeks back I was having a chat with another ex racer who now lives out here in Spain ,John Parkinson who used to race a top alcohol dragster, he happened to mention that Mark and Phillipa Turton were coming over for a long weekend stay with him, I know those two as not only do they race in the Wild Bunch but they also live in Sundon Park my home estate in Luton. I arranged with John to pop over and surprise them. John lives in Murcia well a little outside the City of Murcia and I knew it was a few miles away, John gave me his full address including instructions such as "turn left by the big log pile" and "take the first farm track on the right".

A long trip 440 km return in total

I had intended to leave around 10 pm but! I had a wee accident, I took the bike out of the garage put it in gear and left it on it's side stand on flat ground while I texted John to tell him I was just leavening I then went into the garage to fetch my helmet and while I was locking the garage door I heard a noise i turned round to see my bike falling over. Well I was so upset there was no reason for it to fall over, Getting it back up was another problem it weighs over 350 kilos I manages somehow. I had a good look round and the only damage I could find was a couple of scrape marks on the plastic that is there to take this sort of damage if the bike falls over...

I think I have been very lucky anyway a little later than expected I left for Johns place, roughly 130 miles and 2 and half hours later I arrived at Johns. As good as his word he hadn't told Mark or Phillipa that I was coming I had a great time. To say John lives off the grid is an understatement his place is at least a kilometre down a farm track and by that I mean unpaved road and that was from some thing that resembled a badly maintained path.

I wasn't joking about being off the grid thank god my bike is an adventure style machine as I would have had some serious problems getting down that track on a normal road bike, in fact there are some parts of that track that I would have problems with in a car and I'm not joking.

 
A short Video of me leaving John's place

A fill up in the local town and I'm on way home again as I said I had a really great day I love riding and it was good to meet up with old friends. The new taller windscreen worked well by the time I got home the bike was on 997km and was returning an average of just under 50 mpg.. Time for the bike to have it's first service I was surprised to have to pay for it as most of the other bikes that I have had from new the first service was free this one cost me nearly 100 Euro with tax so god knows how much the first real service is going to cost but at lest I don't have to find that out till I have 10,000 km on the clock or a year has passed. i dropped the bike off and went for a cuppa and a walk round for an hour went back tot he dealership paid picked the bike up and set off for home...but! the Yamaha dealer is on a busy road, the main road to the beach, I saw a gap n the traffic and went for it,...holy sh*it the front wheel came up and shot across the road and nearly missed the three lanes completely. On inspection I found the bike had been left in sport mode not touring and the traction control had been turned off..wow what a difference that makes. Looking forward to the next adventure.

7. Trip 3

So far I have ridden down to Benidorm and I have done a trip out round the mountains and over to Cullera so for this trip I went a bit further with far more twisties the route was around 65kms, if yo look at the map of the route you can see how many twisties there are, a good test for the bike and my riding skills methinks.

Also this little trip out will give me some idea  of whether the upgrades were worth it and work or not this route take me out past Villalonga then up some very narrow steep roads out towards a rather eery sounding village called Salem. The views along the way were staggering but as usual on the narrow roads around here there is nowhere to stop and take photo's, I had to wait a little later on while descending a road which looked more like a badly surfaced path in first gear, yes it was that bad.

As you can see the scenery is something else god knows what it will look like in the summer anyway the taller screen and winglets worked great a huge improvement no more head buffeting and the bike feels more planted, I am really getting used tot his machine and it is slowly getting under my skin, next trip will be this weekend when I go down to see a friend of mine in Murcia around 130 miles each way,should be fun!

6. Bits arrived...

There are a couple of things that I needed to address with the bike, the first being that the screen is way to short for me and the buffeting I received when on my trip to Benidorm really hurt my neck. The other thing I learnt was that you can get little "winglets" that fix tot he fairing which are supposed to help no end with wind buffeting. The other thing I wanted to try and protect was all the electronic stuff for the suspension so after talking to a few people a rear hugger was ordered this will stop all mud and muck hitting the electronics. This duly arrived from the UK within a couple of days.

I fitted it the same day with no problems at all I also had ordered a front guard fender extender at the same time which I also fitted but I stuck one of the rivets in the wrong place...oh well it will still work. I wanted to bling her up a bit as well as all that black is a bit bland so I ordered some rim tape for her now this stuff comes in so many bits and you have to space it round the wheel at different intervals depending on the size of the wheel I had good intentions to start with but lost patience in the end but they look OK and break up that black look.

Last but not least the slipstream "winglets" turned up from the UK also an easy fit but supposed to be able to perform magic with regards wind buffeting we will see when I go out on her next..

The final piece of the jigsaw arrived the next day the larger screen from Puig I wasn't too sure about this as the size of the bigger screen ruins the looks of the bike but then I want to tour on her and it's no use if I am getting buffeted all over the place.

I suppose if it works then it is worth it I got the slightly smoked screen as I will be doing most of my riding here in Spain or along the Med and the sun is really bright and I think the slight tint on the screen will help, we will find out soon.

5. A little bit further..!

Two days ago we had yet another great looking day here in Palma so I decided to plan a route that would take me to a couple of places that I wanted to see and also put some miles on the bike. We met a great American couple who live a few km from here in La Drova. Eric and Janet, last week he went for a little ride on his BMW and put a video up on his face book page, it looked interesting, lots of twisities so I put that route into my trip and then on to Cullera not using motorways, I wanted to see Cullera as this was where Lorni used to come with her Dad, Len and it is one of the places he asked for some of his ashes to be spread,. Then it was down to Oliva beach and back home via La Font,...

....around 112 km,  I was shocked to see the fire damage that had occurred last summer I had forgotten all about it until I rode through Barx and La Drova, I could see where the fires had travelled past the houses and in some cases not passed by at all, it then hit me how close this had happened to my home village.

All those trees are burnt out and if you look close  you can see the fire damage on that building!! from there I went up the mountain and stopped off for lunch at a view point and what a view point it is.

Looking across the valley towards the Med

Looking towards the monastery of St. Maria

Bike (Tina)  looking all Majestic

The next stop on my trip nearly didn't happen as the sat nav went away on holiday and when it came back it tried to get me to turn around and go home, so I had to stop for a while and sort it out but I got there eventually and what a nice place it is too. Unlike Benidorm the place is empty at the moment almost devoid of any human life at all but I bet it is heaving in the summer during the season.

The plan was to then motor on over to Oliva beach and then home but the sat nav put paid to that for now so I made my way back home. Not going to complain it was a great day out either way. Now when I got back I compared some figures as I had filled the bike up before I left for the trip I brimmed the tank which took 18.97 litres (4.172 UK Gallons) I had done 308.4 km (191.63 miles which gives me around 46mpg not bad for a new engine I am sure that will increase as the engine loosens up a bit. bearing in mind that there was around a gallon left in the tank  that gives me a range of 230 miles I am told that will increase as well to around 250-260 miles, now I am impressed.